Brands and breakthroughs: How brands help focus creative decision making

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of how brands can help managers navigate the complex process of creative judgment in order to successfully identify and develop original and valuable ideas. It investigates the problems facing companies in their attempt to generate and recognise creativity, arguing that too often companies rely on traditional market research techniques that limit depth and richness of knowledge, prevent intuitive decision making and encourage safe incremental change and seller-centric behaviour. The authors suggest that much traditional customer research dampens creativity, because it is essentially backward-looking. It makes the assumption that customers have the ability and imagination to envision the future, to know what they will desire tomorrow and to be able to articulate that desire. The argument is that the answer to successful judgment is a high level of situational intelligence: the shared knowledge and cultural milieu that encourage managers to focus on and connect with stakeholders, which in turn facilitates more intuitive and creative decision making. The authors assert that the brand provides an essential construct of this concept. This paper sets out to illustrate, via theoretical analysis and practical examples, how the brand can contribute to situational intelligence and in doing so can increase the level of an organisation's ability to innovate and create value. Not only does the paper argue against traditional business practices that inhibit creative behaviour and the ability or willingness of managers to make creative judgments, it also advocates a process of creative brand free-flow. This is highlighted by research into a number of globally innovative companies that rely on their brand values to help them break down traditional corporate barriers and help guide, focus and facilitate creativity. This paper is valuable in that it illustrates how a shift in managerial and corporate thinking can lead to higher levels of significant innovation and value creation.